By Jonathan Klotz
| Published
Mark Wahlberg doesn’t do a lot of sci-fi films, starring in two Transformers movies, Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes, and Infinite. It’s the last one that’s the most surprising because three years after it was unceremoniously dumped onto streaming, it’s been one of the most popular movies on Amazon Prime for weeks. Wahlberg’s attempt to launch a sci-fi franchise is surprising about the movie, but so is the film’s director, Antoine Fuqua, who is known for The Equalizer franchise, making his only foray into sci-fi action.
Originally released in 2021, there’s a good chance most of the people streaming it today think it’s brand new when, in truth, it was jerked around by a studio and tossed out with the belief no one would find it.
An Attempted Franchise Starter
Infinite has all the makings of a second-tier sci-fi action franchise, similar to Jumper or Valerian, and devotes a significant chunk of its runtime to explaining the world. I watch a lot of sci-fi, and it feels like every film wants to be the launching pad for the next big thing, but few are as brazenly obvious about it as Infinite. It’s as unsubtle as Tom Cruise’s The Mummy and that ham-fisted attempt at the Dark Universe.
An Infinite is explained as being part of a select group of 500 individuals that retain memories from their past lives. Over the centuries, this group has split along ideological lines into the Believers, who hope for the best for humanity, and the Nihilists, who have become disillusioned and want to end the reincarnation cycle and the world in that order. Mark Wahlberg plays Evan McCauley, a man struggling to get by thanks to schizophrenia and a history of violent outbursts, but that’s because he’s really an Infinite, but his mind was damaged, and he can’t accept his past lives.
There are no twists and no surprises in Infinite, which isn’t a bad thing, as there’s definitely room for some light, feel-good sci-fi action in which the good guys win and the bad guys lose, but the film feels like empty calories. It’s the Little Ceaser of sci-fi: empty calories that remind you of a different meal the whole time you’re consuming it.
Impacted By COVID
Infinite is an adaptation of The Resurrectionist Papers, a self-published novel by D. Eric Maikranz, who creatively offered a 10 percent commission to any readers that connected him to a Hollywood producer. Paramount picked it up in 2017, originally with Chris Evans attached, for his first post-MCU role, but he dropped out, and Mark Wahlberg signed on, with Fuqua attached as a director, and then Chiwetiel Ejifor onboard as the villain; it was set up for success and was going to meet its worldwide release of August 7, 2020.
COVID changed everything, delaying Infinite to May 2021 and then September, and then Paramount decided to skip a theatrical release and dumped it on Paramount+. For years, the film quietly languished on the service, with critics taking aim at it as being a B-movie that tries to copy all the best parts of other films, most notably The Matrix. Yet, once it was available on Amazon Prime, the film spent weeks on top of the service’s top ten list, with no signs of slowing down anytime soon.
Infinite is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.
